Sergei ?ikhailovich Slonimsky (born in 1932) is one of h? leading composers of the Russian modern music. His creation embraces actually all the genres - from operas and symphonies to cinematographic sound-tracks. Slonimsky is the author of more than fifty compositions. The cast of performers in his vocal cycles varies from traditional one (voice and piano) to mostly exotic ones (?. g. the new cycle ''Three Songs'' to the verses by Yevgeny Rein for basso, trombone and wooden beam). Slonimsky addresses to all kinds of poetry, including now the ancient Indian lyrics and David's psalms, now songs of troubadours and the Russian folk songs, now the Silver Age poetry and the one of the composer's younger contemporaries.
The offered collection contains six vocal cycles:
- to the verses by S. Yesenin, N. Rubtsov, ?. Gorodnitsky (per one cycle),
- three cycles to the verses by Ye. Rein.
All these cycles are united by one common feature. This quality is revealed ? resorting to utility genres, i. ?. romance, song, urban tune, variety melody. ???? the composer continues and further works out the intonations, genre peculiarities, measures and imaginative sphere of the poems themselves.
Everything is not really as clear as it seems on the surface. If you remove scales from your eyes, the polemical underlying idea will appear before you. Both Yesenin and Rubtsov are represented without their usual affected Slavophile hint. Yesenin occurs to be the lonely and lost soul, while Rubtsov exposes his simple- heartedness and mostly touching defencelessness. The poet Gorodnitsky enjoyed his popularity for his lyrics with guitar accompaniment. ?? is demonstrated here by the poem about the problem, sometimes real impossibility of ??? verses to be set to music. The robber's song about the new ????|??? is given after this, also to Gorodnitsky's words.
And finally the composer comes over to Yevgeny Rein. Slonimsky started working with his poetry long ago in th